Love her or loathe her, Gwyneth Paltrow is an open book. She gets down to the nitty-gritty of things, whether it’s her sex life, former partners, her wellness empire and, of course, her modern family.
The actress and lifestyle business mogul isn’t afraid to stand out and she’s never shy of causing a stir – that infamous vagina-scented candle included.
But in a new interview with Stylist, the 51-year-old Goop founder proved that perhaps she is just one of us when sharing her immense feelings of grief over her children and stepchildren leaving home.
Paltrow has never minced her words, and first and foremost she sees motherhood as her greatest role. For the star, her sadness is less about her children growing up and more about her own sense of identity.
In just a few short months, her son Moses, 18, who she shares with ex-husband Chris Martin, will fly the nest. As will her husband Brad Falchuk’s son Brody, 17.
“I’ve been so defined and so fulfilled by motherhood. I don’t even know how to articulate it. It’s like the guiding force. It’s what I return to,” Paltrow lamented to Stylist.
“It’s been basically 20 years of me being beholden to a school calendar – so what will that feel like to not have that?
“On the one hand, [there’s] incredible sadness. A deep sense of impending grief,” Paltrow continued. “On the other hand, this is exactly what should be happening.”
“Your kids are supposed to be young adults who can achieve and cope and make connections and be resilient,” Paltrow added. “That’s exactly what you want. And that means they leave the house.”
Paltrow clearly has family on her mind. Just a few weeks ago at the Visionary Women’s International Women’s Day Summit, she opened up about being a stepmother, and how it wasn’t all smooth sailing when the Oscar-winner and her producer husband merged their families.
“I really like to talk about this because it’s one of my biggest learnings as a human being,” she told the crowd.
“My area of growth personally came from the initial difficult relationship I had with my stepkids,” she admitted. She added that, after almost a decade, “Now they’re like my kids.”
In a 2023 interview with People, Paltrow also addressed the challenges of blending families, explaining, “It’s hard, and it’s not intuitive, and nobody tells you how to do it. You just stick with it. Now it’s one of the things that brings me the most happiness in my life.”
But the march of time doesn’t stop for anyone, and now new lives beckon for the brood.
Moses and Brody’s departures come two years after Paltrow’s daughter Apple, 19, packed up her life in Montecito, California, for university in New York.
In preparation, Paltrow cleared her social calendar and bunkered down with Apple. She’s doing the same the second time around.
“I never really go anywhere or do anything because I want to be around my kids while they live at home. You know, it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re doing a girls’ weekend here and there,’ and I’m like, ‘[expletive] no, I have 88 days left of Moses living [with me].”
We do hope the star enjoys every minute of those 88 days – but we’ll be waiting for Paltrow to emerge from her post-school mum era. We also hope she’ll dabble in acting once again, four years after we saw her in the Falchuk-produced The Politician.
“I don’t long for it, I don’t miss it. But things can rekindle at different times in your life,” she told People the year she turned 50. “I’ve lived long enough to know that you can never make assumptions about who you’re going to be.
So never say never!”